Maybe you've already mentioned and I missed it, but have you spoken with their customer service? I'd imagine that's covered under their protection plan. Or they'd at least replace it for a fee smaller than the purchase price.

The running in Safe Mode thing was at the direction of customer service. I've e-mailed them my findings and am waiting to hear about next steps.
Oh, and I'm on Fi. Whenever I check for trade-in options all I see is the 3s and the 2XL. My work phone is a 2XL and it isn't bad but it's too big for what I want from my personal phone. If it doesn't fit into the side-leg pocket of my carpenter pants then it won't do me much good cuz I'll be damned if I wear two holsters.

And I was able to confirm that even in safe mode with 25% declared charge the phone shuts down if I open the camera app (or the battery report at 20%).
Edit I just noticed the pooch icon and am grinning from ear to ear. Even better than my little bee buddy!

FFS Google.
24 hours in safe mode. Factory reset. Confirmation that, by golly yes, the phone turning off if the camera app is opened with a battery in the bottom third of its charge is problematic. And then they tell me that my phone is out of warranty and try to punt me to their third party 'partners.' UBreakIFix and the like...
So I reply with "Wait, this isn't covered by the protection plan I purchased when I bought this phone through Google Fi?"
Next reply "I understand you purchased the device through Fi. Escalating you to their dedicated support. 24-48 for a response."
Motherf*ckers, I was logged into my Fi account. Clicked on the Support tab on my Fi account page, and selected the Chat option there. How in the f*ck did the question: "are you a Fi customer with an active protection plan" not come up in the troubleshooting flowchart or while they were poking around in my account?!

Edit: and I found the protection plan links after having to Google it. Couldn't find any hint of a trail on my account or support pages, except for confirmation that Google is still charging me for protection on two devices. Year one is through Google direct, year Two is through an outside company. Putting in my device ID to try filing a claim returns the message that this company has no active contract for my device. You got some 'splainin to do, Google.

FFS Google.
24 hours in safe mode. Factory reset. Confirmation that, by golly yes, the phone turning off if the camera app is opened with a battery in the bottom third of its charge is problematic. And then they tell me that my phone is out of warranty and try to punt me to their third party 'partners.' UBreakIFix and the like...
So I reply with "Wait, this isn't covered by the protection plan I purchased when I bought this phone through Google Fi?"
Next reply "I understand you purchased the device through Fi. Escalating you to their dedicated support. 24-48 for a response."
Motherf*ckers, I was logged into my Fi account. Clicked on the Support tab on my Fi account page, and selected the Chat option there. How in the f*ck did the question: "are you a Fi customer with an active protection plan" not come up in the troubleshooting flowchart or while they were poking around in my account?!

Same reason when I call anyone and the automation ask why and I'm calling and my information, then I have to tell that same info to the person that answers.

So for whatever reason Google decided to suspend my ability to make payments on mobile-- can't buy things from the Play store, among other things. They asked me to take a picture of my photo ID for verification, which I did, and they sent me an email saying "everything's good, you should be able to make payments again!"

Only I can't, and about a day later I get another email saying "nah just kidding your payments are still suspended, now we need a picture of a utility bill at your current address and also a picture of your Social Security card."

Lolwut? f*ck you, Google, you do NOT need my social security number to accept a $5 Paypal payment for f*cking Kingdom Rush.

Has anyone else ever had something like this happen? Is there any way to escalate this to an actual human?

Edit: Yet another instance of finding the solution myself like 5 minutes after asking someone for help. I think the problem was that I had the checkbox that allowed me to receive payments as a contractor through Google Pay checked, which I guess requires extra security / verification. I unchecked that and everything went back to normal. Whatevs.

Edit: Yet another instance of finding the solution myself like 5 minutes after asking someone for help. I think the problem was that I had the checkbox that allowed me to receive payments as a contractor through Google Pay checked, which I guess requires extra security / verification. I unchecked that and everything went back to normal. Whatevs.

$79 later and I am now on a sparkling new Pixel refurb. So far, so good but I won't consider this fiasco complete until they accept the return of the old device and don't charge the $650 hold on my card for this thing.
Edit: this thing came to me loaded with Android 7.1! There was a frantic moment where it told me no Backups could be found on my account. Doing a factory reset after upgrading to 9 brought back all my stuff.

I had mine replaced way back a few months after release for the weird sound bug. They didn't charge me the $79 because it was in warranty still. But they did put that hold on my card and that was a little unnerving. But all went smooth.

Been testing out a new shopping app, Bring!. I am really liking it so far. The app has a web app, watch app, ios app, and alexa connected. All the apps link with each other and you can invite other people to share your list. The biggest selling point is the connectivity, without that out of milk and listonic are better.

Interesting. Does everything work well on the cross-app syncing? Are you sharing with anyone using a different platform? My wife and I used to use GroceryIQ on iOS, which was great for years, but when I made the switch to Android we discovered that, although theoretically it was supposed to work cross-platform, it just didn't: my list would get like months old entries appearing on it, and if I crossed stuff off or added to it, it was a total crapshoot whether it'd be reflected on my wife's list.

Syncing seems to be perfect. Changes seem to update in real time or just a few seconds. I'm not sharing lists with anyone at the moment. I use it on wear os watch, web, alexa, and android phone. It would be interesting to see what the delay is between someone else updating a list.

To be fair, the leaked price for months has been about $2k, so it's not really a surprise.
And as for the headphone jack, I was annoyed with that at first (the trend, not this particular phone), until I realized I hadn't plugged in headphones for years. I have too many bluetooth headphones, and it sounds like the Galaxy Fold is coming with samsung's own headphones.
But I realize that my experience isn't the same as everyone else's.

Samsung website is giving me $300 to trade in my S8 towards the S10 and they are throwing in a pair of those wireless headphones for all pre-orders. That was enough to push me over the edge so I registered for the deal. Supposedly they will be sending me an email with the purchase link, I just don't know when.

S10 models compared.
Now that I've seen the demonstration... I'm disappointed. I've been wanting the Fold for a year or so, but now that I've seen it and can compare stats to others... it's not that good.
I guess I'll be getting an S10+ now.

S10 models compared.
Now that I've seen the demonstration... I'm disappointed. I've been wanting the Fold for a year or so, but now that I've seen it and can compare stats to others... it's not that good.
I guess I'll be getting an S10+ now.

They'd have sold me on the fold if it had stylus support. I like it, but I may wait for round 2.

I'll probably end up with an S10+, but I've learned it doesn't take long for stores like BB to start offering big discounts. So I'll probably wait until early summer. I'll see how it goes when I get the update for the S8+ soon.

And yes, you can fit a headphone jack in a phone with no bezel, 8 million cameras, etc. Thanks for that, Samsung.

I'll probably end up with an S10+, but I've learned it doesn't take long for stores like BB to start offering big discounts. So I'll probably wait until early summer. I'll see how it goes when I get the update for the S8+ soon.

And yes, you can fit a headphone jack in a phone with no bezel, 8 million cameras, etc. Thanks for that, Samsung.

Same... might wait for the 5G model to launch assuming the price difference is negligible.

Never forget Harrison Schmidt!

"With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." - Christopher Columbus